This just in - the mod has been repackaged by a kind fellow to ensure that it runs in either ZDoom or GZDoom with the user's preferred settings rather than forcing the edited version of ZDoom and the config that comes bundled with my version. Please use this version instead if the old one doesn't work properly for you:

The first file is the "IWAD". All I had to do to make it was move the MAPINFO out of the _beta's Zdoom repack (as explained above). This will work as its own IWAD, or as a PWAD on top of Doom II (or similar).

The second file is a small cosmetic item. It will let the correct title bar appear on the loading screen, if you choose to launch the game as an IWAD (since GAMEINFO can't run from an IWAD).

I just played through the demo at one go. In ZDoom. And I was totally totally liking it.

Visual and design style is surprisingly similar to Wrack's :) But aside of cartooniness, it's also even more elaborated and extensive, since Doom engine allows for it without lagging. The graphics are awesome, and even though they're simple, I imagine it must have taken enormous time and effort, since there's SOOOO MUCH of those textures and sprites with all angles. The result is fascinating. So many of new enemies, which are actually different in their behaviour from the Doom ones, but are still somehow basic, I mean not overpowered. Which makes for bigger and more intense encounters, and you use them often, and well. Gameplay is balanced really well, leveldesign is great, I like how every of the demo levels has different atmosphere (specially the last stands out). I like how the enemies varies in behaviour, for example how the purple cone "chaingunner" has low pain chance which itself makes him much bigger threat.

(Did I notice correctly that the cylindrical-like robot repeatedly firing green pulses, doesn't face the player before it starts firing (but he stops already)? Is that intentional?)

The weapons are great too, except just a few minor things. Shame that the "Dozi" doesn't have its own ammo counter on status bar. I noticed that, it was just my feeling and it may be objectively false, that the dual Paint guns are a better choice for combat than the chaingun-like projectile firing weapon in slot 4. Hitscan weapons are generally more useful than projectile ones, plus I felt the chaingun consumes ammo faster (a couple of Paint shots consumes only one ammo point) while each of its balls doesn't deliver greater damage than a single Paint shot, maybe even less. You know Batman Doom? Its Batarang weapon used the same ammo as chaingun, but fired projectiles. These projectiles had much more power than a chaingun shot, but anyway it was sometimes better choice to use the chaingun, just because it was hitscan, (plus it was rapid fire, but I think the hitscan character of the weapon is more important). I'd recommend you to make the chaingun (weapon 4) slightly more powerful.

I'd like to see this a Cacoward winner, only one thing remains a mystery and I'd like to hear from you - of which year? :)

Played the demo. It's GREAT! I had an almost-permanent smile on my face throughout the game.

What I liked:

Enemies explode in blobs of cartoony giblets - along with the eyes. I really, really liked that the hard hats on the cannonball circles fall and bounce around. All of those cool touches really add something, and worked well given the visual medium.

The level design, for the most part. Each map had texturing that matched its locale, and each map was laid out pretty well without me getting too lost.

The music score, but then again, that's kind of your bread-and-butter, isn't it? ;)

The "Cylonder." Somebody likes Battlestar Galactica!

The particle effects. In static settings, they added to the feel of the environments, making them seem alive, and not just shallow hulls filled with enemies and items.

As previously said, the Oozi is lacking an ammo counter on the status bar. I was also never sure what ammo type it used anyway. Was it colored the same as the color of paint it used?

The "password" part of the industrial park level felt out-of-place. While I think it was a decent gag, it's kind of frustrating to switch player progress from keys and switches to (presumably) level state (I was running around forever). Maybe an "access card" or "disk" of some kind should be used instead, and give the security system a "boot-sequence" set of screens?

Green water sometimes damaged the player, and sometimes didn't. The consistency is understandable, switching from Doom to this, but it might be annoying to newcomers.

Those are my critiques so far. All in all, it was a fantastic experience!

scifista42: Thanks. :) I'll say though that Wrack wasn't what I was trying to imitate. I guess I was going for something entirely my own, since nearly all the graphic work is my own (lizardcommando and zrrion helped me out, but it's all still original), and a playful cartoony visual style is something I've always wanted to see in a first person shooter. A few of the sprites in this were actually taken from an old incarnation of the project when it was originally going to be for the Duke engine.

I'll investigate the issue you mentioned with the Cylonders.

I can try and make the paintcannon slightly more powerful since there have been a few complaints now as to its usefulness when compared with the double paintguns. It's my personal favorite weapon in the mod and I'd hate to see it go neglected by players because they reckon it's not really powerful enough.

MTrop: Thanks a bunch for the critiques! Hugely appreciated and really glad that it made you happy. :D

That's actually a neat idea regarding the weapon order. I might just change it to that way. :D

The Oozi issue is kind of a tough one because I want it to have its own ammo type - green paint rather than blue paint. (It was going to be a secret weapon for a long time, like the AD2 Uzi you might recognize it as being based off - but I loved using it so much that I just included it as a regular weapon in the levels.) Maybe I should have it so the green paint counter replaces that of the blue paint on the status bar when the oozi is selected?

The password part of the Factory level is indeed a little bit odd to me on reflection. I should probably replace it with an actual item.

The green slime thing you pointed out is also kinda tricky - I want as much color variety in the maps as possible to give it that vivid cartoony feel I've been going for, and I'd quite like the slime of the sewers to be bright green, even though it damages in MAP01 and not in MAP02. I'd replace it with the duller green color of slime, but I feel like the map would lose a lot of its visual appeal if I did that.

How do you mean "launch a map in UDMF format"? Do you have the map open in Doombuilder and you launch it from there? In that case, there would be no need to care about the bug considering it doesn't show elsewhere. Or do I understand incorrectly?

Yep, I'm loving the changes here, Jimmy! Many of the niggles I was planning on bringing up regarding the previous release have been ousted (not that they weren't already mentioned), including the weapon slot arrangement, and there are some super cool changes here and there which just make it seem that much more polished and fun, like the square shaped armor vests. They gave me a chuckle!
Come to think of it, I still find myself laughing quite a bit at all the silly paintsplosions and "circle jerk" antics, and probably won't stop even when it starts to get old.

I'll give this a couple of playthroughs before getting back to you with some more in-depth feedback. I can feel my shoulders beginning to square off at the corners...

I'm very biased for this project and I decided to play through it whole once more to check the changes in your new version. Now I'm deep in MAP03.

And my thoughts are a bit ambivalent:

[+]

I like how ladders are handled now. Much more comfortable.

I like (whether you actually put any effort to it or it's default) that if you're out of ammo and select weapon 1, you select single printgun and not dual.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but in the very open MAP03 I felt like the far away monsters are shooting at me with significantly lower frequency, if at all.

[-]

Switches may light up more when pressed.

Cylonders still don't face you the first time before they shoot as I reported before. It's hard to notice though, no big fault, but at least now I'm sure it's there.

Also as someone reported, flowers in an office in MAP03 (where you get the floppy disc) can be passed through. If that's actually intentional, forget about it.

The paintgun cannon is underpowered, and heavily. True it fires very fast, but I made a little test, without looking at your DECORATE codes. I used IDDQD and tried to defeat the robot boss with a consistent fire by a paintgun cannon, and then by dual printguns. I came to the result that paintgun cannon consumed twice as much ammo to kill the boss in comparison with paintguns. To be fair, paintgun cannon killed him faster (in a shorter time). But I still think it's out of balance.

The floppy disk is better than a password, but you didn't probably understand the problem with it. The main problem, at least for me, was that I grabbed the red key and didn't notice the screen behind it is interactive, it didn't at all come to mind when I first played. What you should do is to make its border heavily blink (alter the animated screen texture?). Sorry for not reporting this in my previous post, but as for other people, the password got me lost.

[?]

Did the red heads on electroc springs ("Dark Ovolts") always have an ability to fly, while their weaker yellow counterparts didn't? No complaints at all, just curious.

The new weaponslot assignment is good. I'd however recommend to not have weapon 7 that. I'd imagine some strong and ammo-consuming weapon at that slot, "stunnifier" might be better for a possible slot 8 (?) and you may get yourself a free slot for an extra-secret hilarious weapon found late in the game, and players would be eagerly waiting for it.
(Or maybe: slot 1 - Oozi&Stunnifier; slot 2 - Printgun1&2. Just a thought. More resembling Doom's weapon scheme. Partially.)

What's with the secret counter?!? Considering "Adventures of Square" don't have an intermission statistics screen, it's fine, although it's strange to see at your automap "SECRETS: 3/1" (max secrets is always 1). Is that some bug you cannot deal with?

The dark ovolts do fly, yes. That, and their double attack, is how they differ from the regular ones.

Not sure I see a problem with weapon 7 being the stunnifier. I mean, slot 8 was assigned to the chainsaw in Vanilla - immediately after the BFG in slot 7. For now it will remain that way, although I might put a proper ultimate weapon in the weapon roster at some future point, for the full release. I do already have an idea for one new (non-ultimate) weapon - currently not sure about any more, though.

I'm tempted to not depower the dual paintguns or strengthen the paintcannon any more than I already have done, because either weapon would become basically game-breaking in how overly useless/useful it would be. I'm not really sure how to fix this.

To be honest, I think the screen being interactive is already pointed out quite clearly enough, unless I can get testaments from others saying that it was too obscure for them as well and got them stuck. But the screen blinks, has the words "Enter Password" on it, and there's a little green arrow pointing to it on the floor.

I'll see what I can do about the switches, now that I think about it there probably should be a little higher color difference between their on and off frames, like Doom has.

Sorry about not fixing the Cylonder issue, you're right to point that out. Fixed for the next version. :)

I probably should make those potplants block. I was indecisive for a while, but now I'll do it.

The secret counter anomaly is a bug that ZDoom currently has - it doesn't count items tagged as secret by UDMF as counting towards the secret total. As this has pointed out as a problem, I'll fix the maps to use sector-based secrets (unless it's appropriate for only the thing to be tagged the secret) until that bug is ironed out.

The screen's interactivity in map 2 is still not apparent. Its importance is also diminished by an important collectible in the same room (Circle Key), and it isn't clear that this is a room to revisit. Maybe move the Circle Key to a different room, add a giant flashing border around the terminal screen and add the words "NEED DISK" in comically large letters? I dunno. Just some ideas.

Other:

Square, as far as I can tell, is the only character that actually "bleeds." While I think that it's fine for in-game to show damage, it doesn't look as good on the status bar for a predominantly non-gory game. Maybe he could get more progressively beat up? Less blood, more scuffs, scrapes, bruises, black-eyes, and bandages?

Has any testing been done for deathmatch/co-op? Maybe call the deathmatch mode Rhombus Rumpus or RhomboidRumble?

You do have a point about the placement of the circle key, it does distract in a way from the screen. I think I'll move it somewhere else.

Square bleeding is something that's been in since the very first incarnation of the project. Right now, I think I'm going to leave that in. Plus, his gibs being red is something that I will probably leave in on account of it probably being difficult to translate the gibs depending on player color.

My brother and I have co-oped through it, but we haven't deathmatched. The maps currently don't have DM support and I'm thinking I'll just make some new maps for that. Though given that Zandronum is way behind on ZDoom's features it's unlikely to be worth it at this particular point. It's on my agenda, though. Your names are pretty epic. :D

First you need the password, which you acquire in the green building. Then go to the yellow building (once you have the triangle key) and check out the screen in the little room containing the circle key.

I'll move the circle key elsewhere in the building so it brings more attention to the fact that that screen is interactive.

Progress on the "shareware episode" of The Adventures of Square is well underway! Here is the first in what will hopefully be a monthly series of development journals in which you get to see the progress of the project as it unfolds.

A small team of mappers and artists has banded together to bring you the first installment of what will be a three-episode, stand-alone total conversion. We are aiming for a July 2014 release date, the time leading up to that consisting of map-making, texture and sprite design, bugfixing, gameplay balancing, and detail finetuning. We're making good progress and by my calculations it's looking like that date will stick. :)

Below you'll find some screenshots (most of which are WIP) of the new areas our rectangular rescuer will come across as he works his way through Shape Land in his pursuit of the dastardly Circles having kidnapped Dr Octagon.